VKI JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE — Restaurant in The Villages

Wow! A new favorite restaurant, right here in Lake Sumter Landing, close to our house. My wife and I stopped in at lunchtime for a bite to eat. I am certainly glad we made the choice to stop here, the greeter was very pleasant, and explained the three concepts of eating at his restaurant: Sitting at the Sushi Bar, Sitting at a hibachi table with a chef who cooks your meal in front of you, and conventional restaurant service at a table. We opted for conventional restaurant service, and were shown to our table. The restaurant had quite a clientele for lunch, and as I looked around, I noticed everybody was enjoying the experience. Our waitress immediately took our order for drinks and brought them to the table. After a considerable amount of looking through the menu, where everything looks good, I chose a lunch of hibachi grilled steak and vegetables with fried rice. My wife chose the lunch portion of Tempura Shrimp and Vegetables. Each of our meals was served with miso soup and house salad with carrot ginger dressing. I enjoyed my hot tea with the clear soup and salad, taking in the quiet of the restaurant. Thereafter our meals arrived and I was impressed by the Tempura plate: Every piece fully battered, yet still crisp and light. I tried a bite of my wife’s shrimp, sweet potato, and squash Tempura: each was very nice in taste, texture, and nice and warm. For my Habachi grilled steak with vegetables, the steak was fully flavored, warm and juicy. The grilled vegetables were a pleasure to eat, and the fried rice good, but present In such quantity I could not finish it all. All this food, service, and atmosphere for a little over $20 a person: quite the bargain in today’s market. (As Arnold Schwarzenegger said:...

Wow! I'm totally surprised at the number of four and five star ratings! Last Thursday 09/09/2021, our family, a party of 15, decided on Sushi to treat our grandchildren who were visiting from Texas. I know what you might be thinking , grandkids that like Sushi, but they love it! So we decided on VKI in The Landings. We arrived at 5:30 and were seated at two Hibachi grills at 6:00pm and served our drinks. They took our orders and after 15 minutes, they moved our entire party to a back room, the privacy was nice! At 7:30 our food began to arrive and by 7:45 everyone had their meals. I had Hibachi Salmon, rice, zucchini and a salad, the salmon was frozen, possibly cooked then frozen, the smell was super strong, super fishy and uneatable! I took it home for our cats, they loved it! The rice on my plate was warm and the zucchini, well, some of it was overcooked and some was undercooked, on the same plate! How's that possible? Others who had Hibachi had the same complaint, inconsistent at best! Others in our family said the Sushi was very good and on par with Grace in Ocala. Maybe we caught them on a bad night for Hibachi! Or maybe being moved to the back room threw them off their game! I don't really know, I do love Japanese style Hibachi, but not at VKI!

It's Florida, if a restaurant is going to serve fish, serve fresh fish, not frozen! Frozen seafood is why I don't eat seafood at Long John Silver's or any other fast food restaurant! Drive to the Coast and enjoy some fresh caught, Florida seafood. Actually, maybe I should have chosen chicken, steak or a different restaurant! Our party was eleven adults, two teens, and two toddlers, our tab was over $350.00! Hopefully you'll have...

We have been here several times and been pleased with food and service. Tonight it was like a totally different place. I will admit it's was 845 when we arrived but that still gave us 45 mins. We had 2 13yo with us. We sat in hibachi table. First the waitress was very rude and made it clear she was not happy to have another table. We were only guests at our table. I requested steak med and my husband wanted his well done and he is serious absolutely no pink at all for him. Chef started out with his little utensil show. Now if they were wanting us out he could have skipped that and we would have been ok with it. Instead he held up squeeze bottle of clear liquid and jokingly pointed at my husband who in a joking way opened his mouth. The chef then squeezed about 8 times. It was literally pouting all over my husband's shirt I finally had to say enough. He then used it to make a fire on grill. So definitely not water. BTW we don't drink. There were no alcoholic beverages on our table. Assuming it was saki but my husbands stomach has been messed up ever since. Then he kept throwing broccoli trying to get the teens to catch them. My steak was barely seared. More like rare and my husband's was about medium. He loaded the kids plates with food and my husband's but he must have thought I needed a diet or had ordered a kids meal. I guess he was mad I wouldn't let him throw or pour anything down my throat. When you pay 125 for 4 meals you should leave satified. Instead we left feeling as though they forgot to kiss us before they screwed us. I would not go back there even if...